The use of opiates became widespread in the US in the latter part of the 19th
Century. Morphine became widely available with its use during the Civil War and
heroin became available in 1894. Opiates were sold widely in the form of patent
medicines, and were freely available to anyone who wanted to buy them, children
included. Many patent medicines were fifty percent morphine, and morphine,
cocaine, and heroin were even included in things such as baby colic remedies and
toothache drops.

In terms of medicine, they were regarded as miracles. Morphine was often
prescribed by doctors with the initials "G.O.M." It stands for
"God's Own Medicine". The reason was that there were medical miracles,
in terms of the times. There was little medical understanding of the causes of
diseases and few cures. In the absence of any means of curing a disease,
relieving the pain through the use of morphine was quite valuable.

The dangers of the opiates and cocaine were poorly understood and there were
no restrictions on advertising. Makers of patent medicines often claimed that
their product would cure anything in man or beast. The claims were frankly
ridiculous.

The first opium law was an 1875 law in San Francisco was an 1875 ordinance
that outlawed opium smoking in opium dens. Among other things, it was alleged
that Chinese men were seducing white women in opium dens. The measure was
primarily directed at the Chinese, by punishing the Chinese custom of smoking
opium in dens. Opium was still freely available in other forms. It came during
the same period of time that other anti-Chinese laws were passed, such as laws
against wearing hair in pigtails, as Chinese men did at the time.

The widespread and plainly fraudulent sale of patent medicines, and other
consumer product safety issues, resulted in the Pure
Food and Drug Act of 1906, which established the Food and Drug
Administration and gave it the power to regulate foods and drugs. Subsequent
acts defined rules on advertising and product content that essentially
eliminated the patent medicine industry.

This act did not prohibit opiates and cocaine generally, and these drugs were
still easily available by prescription through a doctor. It should be noted that
while the dangers of the drugs and the completely unrelated marketing of the
drugs were becoming widely recognized, there was no large social movement to
have these drugs outlawed, as there was with alcohol.

The rate of addiction to opiates is hard to determine with any exact measure
for many reasons, including the fact that the term "addiction" has no
exact meaning and may be defined differently between one person who is counting,
versus another. In addition, there is quite a bit of use of these drugs for
completely appropriate pain relief, so not all regular users are
"addicts".

But, with those qualifiers and others, the rate of addiction to opiates then
was not substantially different than it is today. This is all the more
remarkable because they were so freely available, and even heavily promoted with
false claims. However, addiction during that period of time tended to be more
prevalent among people like middle-aged women living on farms while today it
tends to be more prevalent among groups like minority males.

There was no real "drug-related" crime during this period of time.
That is, the opiates and cocaine were not associated with crimes like robberies,
murders, violent crime, burglaries, or any of the crime commonly associated with
them today. There were addicts, but the addicts weren't criminals and there
wasn't any great clamor to have these drugs outlawed, as there was with alcohol.
They were recognized as a problem, but not a criminal problem.

These drugs became illegal nationally with the passage of the Harrison
Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 which, on its face appears to be only a law to
place a tax on these drugs. The intent, however, was to make the taxes and terms
prohibitive to all non-medical use. That is, anyone who wasn't getting them
through a doctor had to pay a tax and get a license. Then the US Government just
made the terms of the taxes and licenses impossible to meet. Therefore, when
they arrested someone for possession of opiates or cocaine, they didn't arrest
them for possession of drugs. They arrested them for possession of drugs without
having paid the tax and/or acquired the license. That is, they were arrested for
a "tax" violation.

The prohibition of drugs by the Federal Government was not of appeal to some
political interests but were persuaded by lurid reporting such as the following:

Most members of Congress probably did not realize that they were passing what
would be later regarded as a general prohibition law. The prohibition became
progressively tighter through the present day with a long series of acts and
bureaucratic acts by the Federal Bureau that have increased the criminal
penalties steadily since 1914.